


Two AM In The Key Of Anxiety

by FeathersMcStrange



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, Female Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 07:00:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3927292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeathersMcStrange/pseuds/FeathersMcStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy Lewis is brilliant, in college, funny (if she does say so herself), and wholly competent at surviving end of the world scenarios.</p>
<p>She also has an anxiety disorder.</p>
<p>Jane understands, and handles it. </p>
<p>Everything turns out okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two AM In The Key Of Anxiety

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt from a friend, from a prompt meme on Tumblr:
> 
> Darcy Lewis + Jane Foster + 'test'

Jane leaves her room at two in the morning because there are noises in the living room. There aren’t supposed to be noises at this time of the morning, especially not when she herself has gone to bed at a reasonable hour for once in her scientific career. Darcy is staying over because her apartment flooded and there isn’t anywhere else for her and her gigantic orange cat to go. That however doesn’t mean that there should be any noise going on, because Darcy is - contrary to immediate assumption upon meeting her - pretty regularly asleep by midnight at least.

Not tonight, however. Tonight she sits on the floor of Jane’s living room with a pile of textbooks and maybe six legal pads spread around her. Her hair is up in a ponytail - but only barely. Hair falls around her face, mussed and tangled. Her mascara is smudged and her hands shake. 

When Jane sits down on the sofa behind her, Darcy looks up with a sharp jerk of her head.

“It’s the notes, they’re not making sense no matter what I do, no matter how I look at them the words aren’t making sense and this test is tomorrow afternoon and I’m going to  _fail_ , I’m going to fail and-”

“Darcy.” Jane’s voice is quiet as it pierces through the stream of words tumbling from Darcy’s jumbled mouth. Her friend looks at her with eyes too wide and this is not Most Of The Time Darcy Lewis.

This is scary two in the morning no sleep Darcy Lewis, this is catastrophizing and panic and a brilliant mind stuck in a frightening maze unable to scramble a way out, growing more and more frantic.

“Darcy,” Jane says again, because she doesn’t know what else to say. She wants to say ‘go to bed’, she wants to say 'you’ll be alright’, she wants to say 'you’re getting an A in this class already’. But for some reason those things will not leave her lips and so she forgoes words and slides to the floor beside the other girl.

Darcy has always spoken better soundlessly anyway.

Wrapping her arms tight around her friend, Jane leans her cheek against curly hair several shades darker than hers, and starts to talk. She talks about the week Darcy has already spent preparing. Jane talks about how this is just her mind expanding on a perfectly rational fear of failing a test, and when she arrives in the classroom she’s going to find that she knows every question by heart already.

She murmurs about circular thinking and recites lines from long ago psychology text books, because while Darcy is a girl whose head is adrift with whimsey, she has always been grounded in facts, and telling her that her mind is just playing tricks on her is comforting.

Jane is a scientist, and if she says that Darcy is working herself into a panic because of different brain wiring rather than an actual problem, Darcy will believe her and her pulse will slow, her breathing even out.

When the morning comes both of their stiff necks and sore muscles will hate them for this, but as Jane’s quiet, calm voice spirals from reassurance to chemical equations to the legends of the constellations and Darcy drifts in and out of consciousness until out wins, there is not another place either of them would choose to be.

(The test comes and goes. Darcy gets a 97%. She gets Jane a cupcake on the way home.)


End file.
